From Dog Kennel to Chicken Mansion – Building Real Food Security on a Changing Earth

Welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast with author Sarah F. Hathaway and co host Chen Gibson. Flending survival fiction and fact to bring you entertaining education that will help you dream, survive and thrive. And now here's your host Sarah F. Hathaway and Chen Gibson. Hello, and welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast. This is episode number four hundred and ninety two. We're getting damn close to the fifth five hundred episodes. And that's awesome, Right, Chim, what's up? We have Indi Daytona right, five. Hundred episodes film from the Pace car Will Drive. Yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy. Like I was thinking, Uh, my mom and I were talking about it the other day, like if somebody wanted to listen to my podcast, you have to do it like over you know, take you longer than a year every day listening to one show. So about a decade of my life all recorded. It's crazy. That's cool. But here we still are just rocking it out. And I've been busy down here in Texas. We so so when we moved, we moved from like forty acres in the country to urban America. We have an acre. People say we're in the country, but for us, it feels like we're in like super rural America or super urban America. Right. So all of my projects that at like my home staying projects, I've been figuring out how to make them like kind of yuppie but takes a still yeah, but take like all the knowledge and the homestay acknowledge that I've been accrueing over this decade and make them pretty cool and functional. And uh So that's what we're talking about today, is my chicken coop. If you can't believe. That, what kind of chicken coop is it? It is the bullet proof and it's not really bulletproof, it's just you know, the terminology, like you could definitely take the r ar out and put some holes in it. Yeah, yeah, like a little squirrel. So but I've made a lot of chicken coops in my life. We've owned chickens, uh since forever, I don't know. I guess I was thirteen when my mom first got our first chicken, and they just stayed in a barn in the stall, you know, had a little door that let them in and out. So I've had that kind of chicken coop. We've built long alleys with all the laying boxes on the side and all the I mean you name it, like sheds that were just converted to chicken coops. We've had them all. So this system is really one of my absolute favorite systems. And I kind of developed it because I watched a lot of Little House on the Prairie. And I know, I know, I love them. Yeah, that's like dating me too. But I watched a lot of Little House on Prairie, read all the books, all that kind of stuff, and they always had just like this dog house that was like elevated just out there. That's all they had, you know, and that's great. I'm sure they had a lot of chicken loss and stuff like that. That's been one of the things we've been up against. So but I was like, you know, they don't need that much space, they don't need that much stuff. So when we started we moved to Texas in twenty twenty, we didn't have any chickens did that for like a year, and I was like, we gotta have our own chickens again because the eggs are just so superior. Plus they take care of a fair amount of scraps too. Right, Like now we have the composter because I'll explain a problem we had out here in Texas. But typically you can feed your chickens a lot of scraps and they take care of a lot of those those issues as well. So I love having my chickens. Year two, we had to get chickens back, and we're broke. We're usually you know, shoestring budgeting things and just figuring out how to take old stuff and make new stuff work. So we've always been under the belief that because we've done all kinds of wire right field fencing, all kinds of different wire, we had to keep bears out of our coops, you know, just get creative to make that happen, and all kinds of things. So we came down to the dog kennel because if it keeps a dog in, it's going. To keep out a dog out right. So. It's really really efficient as far as cost of getting started and everything like that. I really like the. We buy the ones from Tractor Supply the dog Kennels. I can't remember what the name of the company is, but it's definitely just like you're running the mill dog kennel. The thing that I like about it the most is. It's the panel system, so you can really match and move like where what where you want your door, so you know that kind of thing where you want the it has like a door that you can turn into a door for the outside area. I'll show that picture in a minute. But I really like this this setup because of that. So we also had a privacy fence. I hate fences, like I just I've lived in the country too long. I really hate them. So we and it was starting to fall down anyway, Like the sun out here just destroys them and they turn into scrapwood. Anyway. So the chicken coupe that I'm showing you now, if you're watching the video, and I'll try to put the video connected to the blog so you guys can come back and see if you're usually listening audio only. I took a lot of pictures of it so. You can check it out and see what the design was and what we came to. Quick note before we continue on, because I want to make sure that we give a shout out to Prepper Camp twenty twenty six coming up very very. Shortly, August. I know, August, I know, I'm. Gonna have to ship books to you soon. M So it's at the Tyron International Question Center. It's gonna be fun. Try try try it like, try it on, right, try on, try on Okay, and it's I always say where it's very screwed up. I have too many dialects going on in this little. Body of mine. Right, I'm from the North. I've lived in Cali, I've lived in the South, so I just move in my mouth. People are like, where are you from? I don't know. I don't know. I'm from America, but uh yeah, Prepper Camp twenty twenty six is gonna be off the chain. You guys, you got to get out there if you have not. Come out before, because maybe you know, staying there, where to stay, that kind of thing was an issue that is no longer an issue, So you got to check that out. Also, season five of the Changing Earth audio dramas now up and live. The videos are turning out really cool. I've been pouring my heart and soul into those. So if you guys get over there, check out the videos, give it a like, subscribe, maybe comment on it, that would be great. It helps move everything along, and the more that we can. Just show that everybody's loving the change in Earth. We'll get it. To the TV screen before too long. So all that's in the works and whatnot. But that's like the hurry up and wait type of games. So but the audio drama is out. It's live. Go check it out on YouTube Changeing Earth series just look for that and you'll find it's It's been a blast to put together. And thank you to all the volunteers, including you Chin, who do voices for the show. I have been dabbling a little bit in like some AI characters for side characters only, but other than that, it's all us. It's all PBN, and everybody's so special for helping out with that. So thank you so much, pretty much everybody from Prepper Camp I have doing voices. Now I gotta get Ken. I gotta get Ken going out. Oh my goodness, he'd be classic boy. He'll get you, just. Like Dane doing Mister Lee. He's just always got the best ad libs. Just listed his audio is best. Okay, So let's get back into the chicken coop. So some specific problems that Texas arose. So I've lived in Michigan and had chickens, so up north, we've got a lot. Of ice stuff like that. You're gonna have to be aware of. And cali. Uh you know, we had a lot of uh go for not gopher, the squirrels that live in the ground. Ground squirrels, the. Ground squirrels, and they literally will steal your eggs and eat them. We also had, yeah, we did. We replaced them. With golf balls for a while because then they would just be getting golf balls. So we'd try to get the eggs real fast and put golf balls in there. We also had like bear, foxes, hawks. We've had a raccoons, lot of fox, coyote and bob kat on our chill cameras on the property. Yeah, like the past couple of weeks. And Chicky is such a nice little snack for that. Yes, yeah, one of the things we did for the bears that would work really efficiently as well, Like you might want to bury the line when you have more predators, you bury your fencing, you know, But we put nails into a board with them sticking out, and that way when the bear put his paws up to the fence to pull it down, he would touch that instead, and why detert them. He did not go after those ducks anymore. So we've had ducks in the past too, and it worked. So do that along the ground. Just make sure you're aware that it's there, because that can do some serious damage. But it works, you know, you gotta do. What you gotta do is traps, stuff like that. We've set up so some specific problems we have out here in Texas. The heat obviously it's primary. The fire ants work absolutely relentless. And one of my favorite chickens, I go out there and she's dead. Just covered them fire ants so they can get to the chicken and just start stressing it out like crazy and then it dies. So that and the mice, because it's all sandy here, they go under the ground actually, and they'll dig up right by the feeder and then pop out real quick and eat the food and go back down their hole. And the chickens will kill them if they're there. But when they can go that close to the feeder, the chickens don't have time to get them right. So before I came up with this system, it was just really a struggle on how to maintain those fire ants, how to you know, keep them cool and also provide them with the skill the ability to haunt the little mice because they'll do the job. It's just giving them the time to be able to do it. So what we came up with, we went with the with the dog kennel, obviously is the outside the privacy fence story comes up because the privacy fence got ripped down and we turned it all into chicken coop. So we actually. Put a two y four across from there's bars inside of the dog kennel that you use as supports and then build. We still put legs on it just to provide the extra little bit, but most of the coop is actually being held up by the two x fours that sit across the bars. With the box built on there. And that's just all old privacy fence that we cut down to the size we wanted and made it into a box. And then for the roof, because I'm a firm believer in a roof, your chickens are going to go up. They will literally scale the edge the side like velociraptor. They will scale the chicken coop to be at the top, or the dog kennel to be at the top. There were some crazy chickens. These are Texas chickens that I got. I would not recommend Tractor Supplied Chickens. I have raised chickens for a very long time, and I've never had chickens that got egg bound, which means they can't lay the egg. It gets stuck right and then it kills them. And I had like six out of the ten. That I bought from Tractor Supply to that, so I don't know that's the first time I bought it from there. Well, my two old betties from Tractor Supply are still living. They live in the left side, and that's where on the image that you guys are seeing if you're watching live or on the video, they live on the left side, and that the roof is all from that. That privacy fence as well. We just u bolted it to the top of the kennel so to get the wood right to stick to the kennel, we just use you bolts. Good hail protection. Right right, like nothing's coming in on those girls there, and it provides all that shade right. Because my solution to the ants and to the mice was concrete, and it was like, oh there, So instead of pouring a slab, we bought the two foot paper blocks and just put paper blocks. Down and that way. You can move them if you want to, Like if you're like, oh I want my coop someplace. Else or whatever, you can move them. No, not enough, right, So I have another key, but not enough to present that problem. And see I couldn't even give my chickens the table scraps anymore because the ants would be on them faster than my chickens would eat it. All right, So I was like, some some's gotta give so further for the ants. I use dietamaceous earth, and it's perfectly edible for them. I'll just do a line around the whole outside of the coop, and if it ever gets bad because the ants do come in trying to get to their food, then I'll just put down die tamacious earth earth in there. After I hose it all out. And that's the other beautiful thing about having the concrete down there. You can just hose it all. No more like having to use a shovel and you got wood shavings all over the ground, and then you have to scoop that up and in your wheelbarrow, and it's all this extra work. I just go in there with a hose and hose it all, and it's as far as. You're keeping it shaded, it won't get too hot for him, right. That was the other thing we wanted to make sure they have plenty of shades so that didn't get too hot. And then we. Built this outside area so if you're looking at the video you can see it, right, it is basically an outside avia. Or we actually get birds stuck in there. They come in, they want to they want some of the food and everything, and they'll go out into the yard and then get stuck in there. So all that is is treated two by fours. We did a ten foot twenty x ten on this coop. It's just two chickens in the side, so you know, we're not super worried about it being too big for them. We are planning on doing additional hoops behind the coop so that we have rotation. We can rotate them between pastures. Right, because you can see they hammer the ground wherever they are. That's what chickens do. But what was really happy with this system really easy to put up, and like if we sell the house and somebody doesn't want it there, it's super easy to bring it down as well. All this is is three quarter inch PVC and you bolt. We put in the wood structure on the bottom. We you bolted the wood or the PBC to the wood, and then at the top of it is just a tea or a cross and that way the pipes come up into the sides and then they run through along. I mean, it's really really simple. Yeah, And when you're you just put it all together on the ground and then you just push the PVC in and it all springs up. You know, glue the top and then it all springs up, and I mean, it is so simple. To do best. So we did chicken wire on the outside of that. So start along the bottom, it gets stapled. You want to bury it if you're in a high predator area, you want to make sure you're burying it a little bit. But it gets all stapled. To the wood down there, and then as we went up the side, we were just wrapping the chicken wire and we zip tied it all around to the poles and to each other and boom. It's so righteously easy. We have slammed so many tea posts to make chicken runs and stuff like to nightmarish level. This is so easy. It gives them the over the top protection. So that hawks can't swoop in all of that stuff. And then you can. See in the picture I planted a BlackBerry there, so I'm gonna have the BlackBerry climb all over it to help you have a more shade even on that side. And then the summertime, Brock will also leave the grass a little bit longer there right up against the side, so that you know it's providing them with more shade. That is their yard is pretty sunny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, their yard is pretty sunny. We're one of the benefits of having it up there. Like these houses here, when they build them, they strip all the top soil away, and so the soil really sucks. So we're remedying that by making patches that we can turn into gardens and stuff like that. Well, having the chicken the coup there every time I hose it, and all of that chicken manure and water runs down the hill at some of our best grass now because it's just feeding everything. I also usually put in like a down spout, you know, on your house under you to catch and then you can shoot it right in a bucket and then I can take it to the gardens or put it wherever I want to Uh. So that's a pretty slick little thing about this coop as well. I mean, and the colick the water and then water your chicken coop. Right, yeah, So that's that's where I'm going, is into the sustainability items for it. You're absolutely right. We could be collecting water off of it and doing that as well. So this is the picture of the inside of the little coop. This is just the normal dog kennel that you'd buy. It's not expanded or anything like that. It's just a normal dog kennel. It's built out of wood. The fence, the privacy fence that we took down when we get the babies, we just put chicken wire across the doorway that you see there, so yep, to just keep them in the box for a little bit and make sure they're big enough to go out. Once they're big enough for me to open that up, they can go down the ramp safely, they can jump up and everything. I'd put chicken wire on the bottom of the dog kennel that way they're not popping, right, yeah, because there's still little enough to go to to get down there. This one one of the problems that I have with it is it's not big enough for me to put the food inside, So inside of the actual inside of the actual box, right, Yeah, So it sits underneath and when it gets really really stormy, then their food will get wet and it gets muckiny and stuck in the thing. I don't know, I mean, I'm just so when it's rainy days and whatnot, we just put less food in there, and then we make sure we're filling it more often. So here's the inside of the chicken kool. Yeah, yep, so that whole thing opens up. We like to have lots of access. Yeah. And one of the coolest things about this is there is. No shoveling involved. You. I just open up that door, I put a bucket underneath it, and I just swoop everything into the bucket. Yeah. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Some people might be like, well, you don't have, you know, a laying box, right, the laying boxes, you know, if you have a little ridge to keep the eggs from falling. I mean, that would be an addition I'd put on ours, maybe because it's easier to clean out without them. I have like one egg and a hundred maybe roll. Off, you know. So, but we do. Yeah, yeah, so I don't worry about building a nesting boxes. Chickens are gonna lay eggs. You make them healthy, happy, they get food, water, they're happy. They're gonna lay eggs. It doesn't matter if they have a little box to do it in or not. Like it's it's a waste in my opinion. But that's just my opinion that I'm just Sarah. One thing we used to do was use wood shavings, a lot of wood shavings, right, and it's always a mess. I still have some in my shed, you know, just in case I need to put some in a yard so it's not so muckety in the wintertime or something. But they sell these nesting pads now and they're really really slick. They're more expensive, but they last a lot longer, they're a lot cleaner. You can just grab the pad and throw them out. And it takes about six of them to do. It takes four like in the center, and then I have to cut one in half or two of them in half to put in the correct places. So it takes about six of them to do this box. So that one's you know, that's pretty effective. So if you're gonna have a small time like you just want a small time coop, not not a lot of production that kind of thing. You know, maybe four. To six chickens in this coop is just fine. Here's just a picture of the ground. I haven't hosed it off in a little bit. I was gonna do it this morning, but I was like, you know what, this sounds so bad because it's been raining. So I just have the water down there. Their little ramp is. Yeah, it just has to be a nice little ramp for them. This is a picture of the door that is on the coop in the dog kennel, so they have these little things built into them. We just tie them back. And so if we're in a high predator area, I would close this every night and lock it down because nothing getting inside that metal area. They can definitely write like a predator could definitely get into the aviary area if they were out there at night. So the chickens come in anyway, They go in their box at night, So I would lock that down at night. But we haven't had any problems with that. I have a great big german shepherd, you know, so I haven't had to do that. But that is definitely an option. The doors are there. You can just you ondo a certain bolt a certain way, boom it swings open. You don't even have to like buy any extra hardware for it or anything. It's really cool. And that's why I like that. Uh here's one of the outside yard area from the other direction, so it just shows you, you know what that kind of looks like when you're looking at the other way with Missus shadowbear bombing along and there she's always photo bomb in my photos, all right. And then so we liked that coop. It was great. But then we got new chickens, cause my chickens are we only had two. They weren't laying anymore, and I was like, all right, it's time for new chickens, you know, So what are we gonna do about this? And I want more of this time, and we wanted to have one side. I'm gonna eventually turn the little one into our like breeding area, you know, so I can have yeah, right, I can have producing females and rooster in there, but not a lot going on. So then we got you know, twelve new chicken I can't remember how many. We're down to ten now. At we built the chicken mansion, which is just awesome. So this one is double the size of the other one. We used the common wall and we just hooked. We bought another dog kennel and we just opened that one up and hooked it to the common wall. Yeah, so there's one in there which is that works slick. We had bought a roof for it when it was Ragnar's kennel, my German shepherd, when it was his kennel, but the roof wouldn't fit on when we opened it up, it wouldn't fit on there anymore. So the roof on this one because they were flying out, god knows why, because they have a beautiful space in there. It is just two y four As we put across, you bolted and then put chicken wire on it. Basically, the only reason why we put the wood there is so that the chicken wire wouldn't slumped down on our heads when we were inside the chicken coop. Right, and then you have what like a sunscreen or something up there. Yeah, so I put it, we tied. We pulled that sunshade real tight over the top. Yeah. Because another problem I have in Texas is the wind. And I've watched one of these empty kennels fly by in the ninety mile an hour gusts before. So yeah, but there was nothing in it, right, and it just picked up busted one of the doors on it. So with them out of wood we have and the little chicken coop that all that weight for the roof and then building in the mansion. Nothing moves this. It's going to have to be a big wind event. Oh, like there's a tornado coming through and at that point. Yeah, so they're not to the ground Nope. I did not stick them to the ground. Nope, They're just put on there and then the wood weight is just way them down. Hmm yeah, I mean easy peasy. Really, you could wrap this hole set up up, Like if we wanted to move to a different property tomorrow, I could pick this hole set. Up and move it. The biggest thing would be the mansion box system that's inside of the big one, because it is the same thing. We elevated it using the sides and built it in to hold it all down, right, So all the wood is built into that kennel to hold it all down, and so that would be the biggest challenge is how to move that gigantic box here's the run on that one. The run for this one. Since there's more chickens in it, we just doubled it. We just took the idea and doubled it and it worked just great. It's the best setup I've seen. And then you can see my little drain spout is up because he's about to mow. That's the drain spout sitting there by the door. Yeah, that I have down on the ground typically for when I'm hosing it to direct the stuff where I wanted to go. All right, let me go ahead and get some more pictures. I'm already here. Because I want to show you this one is really cool. The whole face of the mansion opens, so let's see. I couldn't upload it all my pictures for you guys at once, so okay, So here's a picture of the one side of it. And uh, this is where they like to lay their eggs a lot. You can see the eggs in the little nest area. See this one's big enough as well for me to put the eater inside of it. It kind of creates some chaos sometimes when they all want at it, but you know, uh, they figure it out. Everybody eats everybody's looking healthy. So I'm a fan of that system. And I think you got a climbing wall for the for the ramp. Right, So that was that was a fun project. We didn't have like a whole bunch of scraps on hands, so I used one of those is actually the whittle stick that Brad's kids and Christian made Prepper Camp. We preserved it and put it on there as a step for the chickens. And then I just use, like you know the spikes that you put in the ground for like bender board landscape projects. I just used that for the stairs, so anything works. I just stained it and it works. Here's the corner view you can see I put the They were actually jumping on top of the houses to roost at night and then pooping all over the top of and then I'd have to holose that off and it was a big pain in the butt. So I chicken wired off the whole top so they couldn't get up there anymore, and we gave them that roosting bar down low. You can see the door on the lefts open now and then the corners inside they both open up as well. So let me show you that. It gets kind of weird to maneuver in there, but I mean in the long run, to clean out. This coop is just really really easy. So here's the inside, the corner inside. When it's all opened up, you can get in there to get eggs. You got to have full access to everywhere, right because they could lay anywhere, so you have to be able to get to everywhere inside of the coop to make sure you can collect eggs from everywhere. But yeah, it all opens up, and this system is pretty darn sweet. Let me show you this one here, see, and that's with it all closed down. That's other door on the left over there, So it literally goes from corner to corner across the whole coop, and the door is behind me in this photo. And also their entryway to their outside pen is back there. I think I had it right here. Yeah, so see that's turned around from where I was and out the that's the other door there. So I just wanted to show. I mean, I've it's been years and years of chicken coops and chickens and different designs and different cleaning out, different you know, bird cages and all of this, and this one I'm like, wherever we go, this is what we're gonna build because it is slick. It is really really cool, a really nice system. So I want to take it with you. Yeah, yeah, I mean you literally can. So if they want it, you know, whoever buys my house, well that's fine, but. Right exactly. But otherwise we can just a disassemblat roll up the chicken wire, unto the straps, pull the kennels, and we're gone. We can move the whole set up. So it's pretty slick, especially if you wanted to move around. And uh, like I say, we're gonna put another hoop system in just so we can rotate the pens and get them on some fresh grass once in a while, because they've already beaten that down pretty hardcore there. You know. I wonder if you could get like, you know how they do sod. Yeah, if if you could find a sid farmer's side place that has rejected. Yeah, I don't know, it's all worth so much these days, dude. Because you could just throw side pieces in there. It's true, and they gonna One of the things that I really like to do is I take lentils. I got this from Rick actually. Put lentils and uh, I just have like a grow sheet and just sprout the lentils and then I'll bring them up sprouts and that, because that's my real mission. Next as I'm working on systems that I can put in place that are easy to manage that create food for them. Soldier flies, the black Soldier Flies factory. Yeah, yeah, so. That's something I was thinking about. Meal worms. You know that we could grow meal worms different things that we grow in the garden that we might not eat, but we'll feed it to them. Like lettuce grows like crazy, and you can just give it to them when it's vaulting and whatnot and you don't want to eat it because it's so bitter. Chickens still love it. They can literally eat like all the grass clippings from your mowing activity. They can eat all that. If you have tomato worms and stuff like that, and your place ants on your tomatoes, they eat all that. These little guys. If the heat, they'll eat your toes when you come in there. They're like little velociraptors. I'm not kidding. I call them the velociraptors. They're just some Texas chickens. They're getting it out like yeah, so yeah, pretty cool system. If anybody have as any questions you want to hit me up about it, go ahead and let me know. Do you have so do you have problems in the winter with do you have to put heat lamps or do you have heat it? No, I don't have any. Even if it is, they snuggle up in a corner and they figure it out. They do. I'm not kidding you know down here now, if all was open the Midwest, it'd be maybe a different tune, right, But even in the Midwest, we didn't have My mom didn't run a heater for the chickens. One of the biggest things. If you don't collect the eggs fast enough, the eggs will freeze. So that is a concern. And same in the summer. You got to collect them when it's really really hot. You gotta make sure you collected them fast. But no, everybody's just they huddle up together, they're they're fine, They're they're good to go. It's a nice little insulated area for them and they do really good. So the biggest thing one of my babies. When I first opened it up, we got a windstorm and it blew like two chickens out. They were sitting in the. Doorway and it swirled them around the inside of the thing and they were done. Yeah, that sucked. That was one that i'd like nurse back the health and stuff, but you know, these things, they happen, so yeah, we don't have any problems with that. I just don't the water gets the water freezes, right, so I'll have to switch I keep a water down here at the house and I'll have I can switch my waters out. Yeah, and then with the food getting wet, that's the problem that we run into a lot because it turns into concrete. I think. I think the original recipe for concrete definitely. Involved yeah, like crack corn because you know, it gets pretty yucky in the summertime. But they'll eat all that, so alrighty cool. I'm also gonna do a show I want I am. Well, I'm thinking about doing The Lads of Prepper Camp. That was a fun show. I'm thinking of doing that one. But we built these really cool new gardens too. We're just not like fully done yet and I would love to present those as well. I'm gonna do a show on those and then let you know if we're successful. We are up against Texas this year and I'm gonna grow enough tomatoes. I have canned my own tomatoes since the day I was married. We have a batch tomato products in decades, and I've not been able to get enough to actually can up since we lived here. So I'm correcting the problem this year. I went all in. God knows, but I am like going to beat Texas this year. So I'll report back on that one. You guys, I have to hold me accountable. But yeah, alrighty, so let's jump into the Changing Earth News. It's gonna be a little bit of a long show, guys. I've got some great stuff to bring you. And we didn't do Changing Earth News last last year, last week, uh, last month, which Coach Asher. But that was a great show, right, Yeah, he's He's an awesome guy. I'm blessed, bless blessed to have him in the area. I've wanted to train Crab for so long and then ah, here comes like phenomenal instructor. I'm like, thank you Lord for Coach Asher. So everybody checked that show out if. You didn't see it last year, oh, last goodness last month. All right, let's do some Changing Earth things. I'm quite concerned about what's coming next. Personally, I think we'll probably see food shortages and other disruptions. Are you prepared if things go wrong? Does your family have enough food and supplies on hand to last at least thirty days? If not, the time to prepare is right now. Don't wait another minute to help you on your journey. I recommend my Patriot Supply. They're the leaders in self reliance and they have a four week supply of emergency food that lasts up to twenty five years in storage, so you never have to worry again. Don't put your family through the pain of hunger or standing in government food lines. Go to prepare with Changing Earth dot Com today and your emergency food will be shipped. Quickly and discreetly to your door. Those who know what's coming are using today to prepare, So visit prepare with Changing Earth dot com. The original Patriot Preparedness Come. Their mission is your survival that's prepared with Changing earth dot. Com Dream Survive Thrive is is changing Earth news. All right, Changing Earth news. So one of the big things that's been happening are these earthquakes, swarm activity in Nevada, and everybody's kind of pointed at like oh area fifty one Area fifty one, Well, it's not. There's a lot of activity that happens there in Nevada anyway. There's some huge fault lines and some major stuff just beyond. Like Area fifty one's there. So on April thirteenth, there was a five point seven in Silver Springs and it's triggered a lot of aftershocks from those events. So definitely an odd thing to have happening. We want to just remember, like earthquake's gonna happen everywhere, So make sure that you know you're not like, oh, I don't live in California's not gonna happen, right, Just make sure you have you know, you keep your glasses close by your bed, you keep your a pair of shoes close by your bed, that kind of thing. It's the same prep as we do for everything else. But uh, definitely something. To watch out for when we get into the earth equake activity later. You're gonna see what I mean, because it's not just CALLI the other thing that really hit my radar just recently, Glenn Beck just did a show on the Hoover Dam and just how low we are. It has not been getting the amount of water that it needs. And I've been reporting on this for a couple of years now, you know about the levels of this. The other thing that really really scares me because because we're not getting the same amount of water that most people don't think about is the. Og Lala Reservoir. It's just an underground cavern of water, you know, and we've just been depleting and depleting and depleting it, and so now you're just creating a void, which really really concerns me. I was hoping when I did my research on the Oglala that it would be like, oh, it's not made of the right kind of stone, that would collapse, But it is. And the pipeline runs right above that the gosh, you can't remember the the nord Shrum pipeline or something whatever, that big pipeline, the big oil pipeline is. So the whole thing is just really really. Threatening to me, you know, scary for the Middle United States, scary for our food supply, that kind of thing. And we're just talking like serious. Amounts of So check out the Glenn Beck episode. He's going to do it way more justice than I do. But when the dam at Hoover, the turbines cannot have air in them at all, and when the water gets so low they have to start running those turbines slower basically because they're very frightened of air getting in there. And then if it goes down too far, it's called a deadpool. Obviously, nothing to do with the movie or anything like that, but they can't run the months. It is, they can't run the. Dams, and that's like millions of Americans that aren't going to have power in Vegas and Phoenix and Los Angeles. So not only that, but we're talking about less power, less ability to get water to crops for farmers in California with higher food prices, which we're already looking at, whether that be price gouging the powers a be at this time, and then the fuel costs on top of that. So I say it every time, any investment that you're gonna make in your long term food supply is best done right away because it is going to pay off in the future. It always does. I shop at Sam's Clubs and I only go like twice a year, right. I hate going there. And I put down some coin when I'm there because I only go there twice a year, right, So it used to be that I could go to Sam's get like tons of can veggies, well, coffee supply for like six months, everything for six months for like five hundred bucks. Yeah, four hundred five hundred bucks. Was like, wow, it cost me a grand last time I was there. Yeah, that's what we were just there. It well costco Yeah, difference, right. It just doesn't feel like the savings were we no to see, No. Not at all. I was like, wow, I'm like this is eighty dollars in just coffee and that was only you know, four bags. It'll lasts us about six months. But I found that Glenn Beck Hoover, I'm going to put it in the the which yeah element. And he's going to do more on that because it's definitely the Hoover is not the only dam being affected. I also worry about like the Fort Peck Dam up north. We've talked about it before, and it's Earth eleven dam, and so say the water level starts going down and like the dam's not getting the amount of water flow that it was. Then we have these one hundred year rain events hit it. You know, that's scary stuff. And they're fracking right there by it. They're not very earthquake compatible. So the Fort Peck Dam would wipe out the Mississippi Valley if it went. For those of you haven't seen my show on that one. So you know, there's a lot of infrastructure things that we really need to be focusing on rather than god knows, you know what we're doing these days. I don't even try and watch. I'm sorry, I I'll look for you know, what's going on with with the planet, what's going on that's going to have a major effect, But I just can't engage with the day to day nonsense anymore. It's just ah, it's it's I think it's a it's a distraction, that's uh, it's made to distract us, yes. Just like sports. Yeah yeah, and it's a building a better chicken coop? Right, exactly what gossip or what? And my gardens and stuff like that, and uh, you know all the times we report we've done so many shows on it being psychological warfare, right, and it's like, well, when do you cut it off the psychological warfare? Well, then you also want to be present in your community, so like what you're doing with your search teams and you know, getting involved in local politics, that's. Your volunteering with the sheriff's department. That's a great networking opportunity. Yeah, that's so true, right, and that way you're kind of on the pulse, but you don't have to be exposed. To all that psychological warfare. All right. Before we get into the list to the rundown, I got a run down list for you. But there are some things that were big, big pointers. So the amount of tornado activity that has happened already this year in the United States, pretty crazy record activity. We've already had. E f twos, threes, fours touchdown this year. You know, always around Easter, it gets pretty pretty rowdy down here in the South, but you know, to see them up in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, up in those areas, it's it's, you know, just more and more prevalent. It seems like the tornado season just never really stopped last year. Maybe we had a couple months off. And now here it is again picking right back up and we're talking some major damage. So you know, as somebody who's in the insurance industry, to watch disaster after a disaster happen, it's like, what's that going to do to rates. How's that going to affect you? It's all pretty pretty scary stuff. So oh, not to mention the amount of heartache, heart lot, I mean the loss not only of life but of your whole everything that you knew. So everybody can use some prayers that are up against those tornadoes. Preliminary totals two hundred and sixty two to two one hundred and ninety two plus tornadoes for the month. Yeah, like that's. Just insane, right, and you're just shredded by it. So that is making sure that you know what to do in the event of a tornado at everybody. Well, we've seen them on the top of mountaintops in Colorado now, so I'm not gonna say like where the geographical area is that you should be ready for that because it seems like. It's just expanding. It's reached big time. So definitely, We've done tons of shows guys on getting ready for things like this, So not going to go into that too much. Go check out the shows, but you definitely be prepared. Also, we still have the weakening shielding of our planet with the pole shift, and that is just bringing us this extreme weather and this is going to continue. So one of the things I was actually pondering. If you've been following my chail for a long time, with the Mede shields weakening, the volcanic activity has seemed to just really really uptick. You know. It was just a couple like a year ago that twenty nine was a big deal for volcanoes, and now it's been in the forties for too long. So I'm wondering if that's kind of nature's natural way of compensating for the amount of uptick of radiation that we're receiving, is by puffing off more into the atmosphere, and the solar radiation gets the magma charged up, which is causing the volcanoes to wake up. So it seems like the Lord knows a lot more what he's doing than we do. But just something I was pondering as far as that goes. I don't know, you. Can comment on it whatever. I'll think all kinds of heat for it. But we've watched the Earth is spinning faster and it had nothing to do with Joe Biden. I thought that was the cause. So you just though the Earth was trying to get him out of office. Quick, yeah, yeah, right, all right, So let's jump into our list. In March fourth, Etna has been active. She has been alive, and she's been causing earthquakes over there. There was a whole area of this one cliff that got just annihilated. So as this earthquake or as this volcanic activity upticks, eyes on Italy because there's just a lot of threat in that in that area, so everybody there should definitely be prepared always. On the fifth, there was an earthquake in louis Louisiana. This was a big one. I think I mentioned it on the show, even though we didn't do it Change in Earth last week or last month. Sorry, we'll be back to weekly shows eventually. I'm four point nine, so it was pretty big. It didn't really do any damage, but man, it was unusual to have one there, and so it's just an eyes on situation. You know, Western Texas takes them a lot, but over there in Louisiana, it's not something that you normally see. On March fifth, there was tornadoes in Central USA. This is Michigan. There was also a couple in Oklahoma. It was about twenty five tornadoes and an outbreak. Eight deaths from that activity, widespread damage power outages. Kenya is seeing a significant amount of flooding, way more than their normal monsoon monsoonal rain, so they're having flash floods and landslides, more than seventy one deaths. They're mostly drowning or electrocution because their electrical systems are definitely not built the same way as ours, and so when you get all that flooding, then you get the electricity lines in there. Thousands of people have been displaced, infrastructure damage, agricultural damage. They are used to having monsoons, so when you see activity like this happening, you you know it's an uptick from what is normal. On the ninth to the. Tenth of March, there was flooding in Java, Indonesia. This was heavy rain caused by causing floods, landslides, wind damage, seven deaths, four missing. It was local property damage and agricultural impacts. So Indonesia's always it's just an island I would want to live on. I don't know. They must grow a lot of food there to make it worth it. There's flooding in Hawaii. Do you remember the big flooding that happened in Hawaii that was on the tenth Historic flooding, billions of gallons hit the ground, property damage, evacuations, blizzard conditions on the Big Island up in the mountains, so. You know, one extreme to another. There. On March twelfth, twelfth flooding in Ethiopia landslides from heavy rains. There was fifty two to one hundred and two deaths, including property damage and infrastructure damage. On the twelfth of March, we had wildfires start up in Nebraska. These are were massive. I don't understand. I tend to think of Nebraska more like open area, planes area, that kind of thing. We're talking like six hundred and forty two thousand acres went up. That was crazy. One hundred and ninety two thousand acres plus in a companion fire. One person lost their life in that. There was numerous evacuations. It destroyed homes, barns, fences, structures. So definitely you can see how that lack raine, how this drought we've been in is impacting, you know, areas like Nebraska where you wouldn't think of these huge, major wildfires. On the blizzard storm in North America got hit on the thirteenth of March. Arch last storm. We used to always say, well, it always snows. Once in April when we lived in Michigan, and but they got just clobbered three to four feet of snow ice in Michigan. Fifty six tornadoes kicked off from that storm, so we got cold and tornadoes which you know, don't usually don't usually hear about that. We've had also a lot of thunder. Lightning, so like not thunder lightning, ice lightning where it comes in ice storm and you're getting lightning which doesn't usually happen either. One point four billion dollars in damage from that event. Widespread power outages, road closures, lots of infrastructure damage, and lots of damage to agricultural areas. There was flooding in Malawi, affected more than three hundred and ten thousand people, thirty four deaths, major displacement there, and agricultural impact from that flooding. Big events, guys, just wild, wild flood events. Flooding and drought right next to each other in just crazy intense amounts. On the twentieth of twenty twenty six, in March, there was a CME that kicked off a G three. The aurora was visible at lower latitudes, much lower than it should be under normal circumstances. So it's still eyes on. Seeing the auroras as low as Florida, as low as Cuba in just the recent past. That is definitely not normal activity. So it has to do a lot with our weakening magnetic shield. On the twentieth to the twenty seventh of twenty six, in March, cyclone hit Australia. Cyclone Australia no cyclone Narrel, multiple landfalls, heavy rain, strong winds. This is their hurricane season basically down there. No loss of life reported in that event. March twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, there was an earthquake in Tonga. Those hit big, they hit deep, They tend to ripple around the whole ring of fire. This was a seven point five, so that is a big earthquake. I also saw a nine pointer in March, so I wonder if they've downgraded those. But not unusual to have these big, deep earthquakes hit Tonga area, but they do ripple around the ring of fire, which you'll see in the earthquake numbers in a minute. March twenty ninth, thirtieth the twenty twenty six Samaru and Indonesia erupted again. The volcano uptickspin insane March thirtieth of Ana to earthquake seven point three. It's in the same area as Tonga. Again, this is where these deep earthquakes hit. This one caused several injuries, airport, damage of building, runway, rock falls, power outages, big event happening there. Flooding in Afghanistan on March thirtieth, about twenty eight to one hundred and forty eight deaths. The reports vary on that what widespread property damage. Earthquake in Indonesia on April first, a seven point four. One person did lose their life in that event. Even for Indonesia, that is a big event. Seven point fours don't just they don't just do They're they're the damaging kind. One death, four injuries. Strong shaking CME went off that day, and it can be that the CMEs what actually caused that earthquake and caused our earth to adjust in that way. Whenever you see the CME activity uptick, you also see earthquake uptick, and then volcanoes usually go right along with it. On April second to eleventh, cyclone hit Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It was Cyclone Mala Mala m Aila. It caused twenty five plus death, significant property damage, and infrastructure damage. There was an earthquake in Afghanistan on April third, five point eight. Twelve people lost their life to that event, six injuries, local damage. They tend to build in those pancake buildings, so when they get earthquakes, they just lose a lot of floors and that can that can be a. Lot of what happens there. In May of twenty twenty six, they had massive flooding in the US, specifically the Great Lakes area, so we're talking Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin. Lots of rains caused that snow to melt really really fast. There was also an EF one tornado that came through Ohio on the fourth So all of those storms were bringing to major damage while all the rivers were up. I love the River Tippecanoe. That's one of the Yeah, it's one of the rivers that that was over. I remember that from living up there, Tippy Canoe River, So that's. A fun one. On the eighth to the twentieth, we had another cyclone out in West Pacific. It was impacting China, but before it. Did that, it hit a lot of the islands out there, including sepan and Tinian, severe winds, power outages, property damage, like they're in there full on the you know, cyclone is just a hurricane backwards that the impacts the other hemisphere. So there when we're not getting them, somebody else's where. This is flip flop. New Zealand was hit by cyclone vianiu vian youw gosh. They can even think of some easier words v ai a and you. I have no idea how to say that. Damaging winds, heavy rain, localized disruptions. They tend to ping pong down there between New zealan Land and Australia. On the seventeenth of twenty twenty six, the Upper Midwest got hit again by tornadoes Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois. This is what I was talking about in the opener, significant outbreaks. There was EF three involved in that outbreak, widespread home infrastructure damage. Earthquake hit Japan. On four to twenty seven point four, so it was a big one. They were really concerned about tsunamis, and in fact they did have a tsunami, just not as major of an impact as we saw when the when Fukshima was hit wildfires have broken out in China, so they are also dealing with kind of less rain over there. Again, it's the extreme, so you're getting extreme drought areas, extreme rain areas, so some of it's flooding and some of it's just burning. This is twenty six thousand hectors, so that's about sixty four thousand acres affected, about eleven four hundred and fifteen people in that burned area. And then we come into the twenty second of April. We had those earthquakes over in Nevada that I talked about. In the opener. It is in the Silver Springs area, which is near Area fifty one, which can be associated with oh are they testing nuclear weapons or something of that nature, But it is a highly seismic area anyway, so I'm not sure, you know, if it's natural or man made, but we do have a lot of activity and swarming going on over there right now. I actually sell insurance in that area, and I cannot write earthquake insurance over there right now, so too late, you have to wait for the for the moratorium to get released April twenty second. In twenty twenty six, they had early May wildfires in Japan. One of the largest wildfires in Japan in decades. It burned one thousand, six hundred and thirty three plus. That's about four thousand acres, and when you're talking the size of the Japanese island, it's a big, big fire for them. Thirty two one hundred people were evacuated, significant property, and then the air quality issues that come with it. There's a winter storm that Hey, Russia on the twenty seventh of April. It was a late season snowstorm. Three people actually lost their life in that incident. About seventy six thousand went down without power. And then. The Fuego volcano in Guatemala erupted big eruption. Fuego goes off kind of regularly, so that's one that's not really a big surprise. And then we have the ongoing drought in the South, mid and central United States. So I do encourage you to go over and check out that Glennbeck episode that he's doing on the Hoover. He's doing a bang up job by bringing that info. Kind of stuck it back on my radar two. Because we just had so many serious events going on. It seems like we're always bouncing from you know, one incident to the other. All right, as far as earthquake activity goes, so let's back up to February. February we had seventeen thousand earthquakes that were two point h or bigger. March uptick to nineteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty five, so we had been seeing a decrease before February, and now we're on that uptick. This month or last month. In April, we saw twenty thousand, nine hundred and ninety four earthquakes that were two point zero or bigger. We had a magnitude nine and they're magnitude eight a magnitude seven, so those are some serious, serious earthquakes going on. As far as volcanic activity goes, we have forty one volcanoes actively erupting on our planet right now, which is you know, if we make it up to fifty one day, I don't know, I'll do like a free book series giveaway or something like. This is crazy. We're thirty seven showing unrest, twenty six showing minor activity for total of one hundred and four. On the board, which is really really nuts. And then one last thing. Actually, I'm almost right on time. I'm doing well see, I told you my list wasn't that big. So one side note that I have is because I watch all this stuff all the time and read the Bible a lot, and you know that the area of the Middle East wasn't always just like this desert, and the Sahara wasn't always desert. There was a time when this was all lush, green stuff. They talk about gardens and you know, you look at it now, you're like what. And then Jesus was like, oh, well, you're gonna go through the desolation of your land if you know you don't do these things. And then look what it is today. Well, when we built the infrastry rture of the United States, we were in this really really wet time for the country, which wasn't necessarily normal. We've seen decades where the rain is way less than what we've been blessed with. And well, the United States was really being built during the Industrial Age, was a very wet period for our country. And so now you can see that the United States is starting to get drier. Well, the Sahara is starting to get wetter, which is interesting. So just the planetary like cycles right shifted there, m And that's why I wish we'd worry a lot more about, oh, how do we do long term sustainability of our country, Like we could do desalinization plants and start switching some of these methods and getting you know, alternative power methods and stuff. Now instead of going, well, we're going to put a band aid on it, and then we're going to build a million data centers and we're going to fight you for power so we can run our data centers to monitor you. You know. I just think there's a lot different focus that we could have as a country to you know, be planning for the future for what we know we've seen before in this country, what you know will come again on the Earth. We can't just pretend like it never never changes, right, So that's my stick for the change in Earth news. Yeah, you can't get past the three minute shorts on YouTube. I mean, not you, but society can't get past three minutes shorts on YouTube. You're gonna have them planned for a long termabuilding. Yeah, those are too long, right, We can't put that much attention to it. It'll kill us. You know. If we're more worried. About the superstars and the sports stars. And the but I'm telling you. That's be a good idea to start thinking about our long term food survival instead of you know, it's like when back in the day the Caesar used to take all the food and put it in the storeroom and then sell it back to them right in times. I mean, that's basically what's happening. All our food is nationalized, so nobody really knows how to create it for themselves anymore. Can you create it on the scale to actually feed yourself, to actually feed your community? I mean, I don't, you know so. And you can store and stuff, but you can only do so much. So I think there's some definitely some different issues we need to be examining and thinking practically, like let's get some down to earthenness instead. But that's just me out here in my little corner. Yeah, just chilling him a corner. But if you want to see me this year, and you don't live in this area, you need to come to Prepper Camp twenty twenty six. Get there. It's gonna be a ton of fun, guys. Uh, it always is. And I'm just very very excited for the new venue acts throwing. Oh yeah, you know, there's gonna be some tourneys going on there, except I was practicing and I suck pretty bad, so I broke the acts. Don't stand in front of Sarah. Yeah, I broke it. I was like, all right, I'm just going all in this time, right forearm, no finesse, boop. I broke the hatchet like. I had to practice. Oops, I know target out here. Oh my buddy's got one. But yeah, so I had to buy my new hatchet because I broke his head. I mean they had to that night. But yeah, I'm gonna have to do some person so you can chow up to the plate there. But it's gonna be ton of fun regardless. Check out the Changing Earth audio audio drama. It's going full throttle, new material, great stories. You're gonna just be on the edge of your seat this season because it's gonna rock and roll and. Not let you go. It's pretty intense. And then I was always check out the books and you know, support the shows if you can, that'd be great. But I hope to see you guys all out at Prepper Camp and hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks for coming, Chin appreciate you. All right, guys. Until next time, Remember dream Survive, Thrive. Thank you for listening to the Changing Earth podcast. Please take a moment to like, subscribe, and leave a comment or review. Help make the Changing Earth. World go around by purchasing. The Changing Earth novel series. At Amazon dot com. We'll get your signed copies of Changing. Earth dot com. Get your Changing Earth gear, and become a paid subscriber for extra goodies at Changing Earth series dot com.